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Yippee!

I’ve got another story published! It’s in “Silver Blade Magazine” and can be found at www.silverblade.net/content/?p=1351. My story is called “I Love Death” and it’s a little like my relationship with my wife, but with more fear, trembling, and pillow fort building.

Here’s what happened. The wife was on a committee that amends California legislation and there was a particular statute that no one wanted to deal with. She was a little late getting on a conference call, so she got stuck with it. This piece of law had to do with the disposition of bodily remains, as in, who gets the body after someone dies.

People joked that my wife had become a sort of Wednesday Adams, and she pretty much embraced that.

My paranoid imagination started churning and the story wrote itself (It did not rewrite itself. That was a lot of work).

***

It has been a long time since I’ve blogged. Here’s what’s going on with me:

I have a two week vacation coming up and I can’t wait. As usual, work ramps up the closer I get to leaving. I don’t know if this happens to other people, but during the final week before I go, urgent meetings appear out of the mist that I must attend, and extensive issues that only I can solve that can’t wait, and trainings that are vital that I must attend and and…well, you get the picture. This time I’ve got actual tickets and family responsibilities that I cannot wriggle out of (I mean, I can, but I would expire from guilt), so, but, anyway, this week is going to be intense.

Holy snap. I’ve written 60,000 words of a novel. Now I must make something coherent out of it and hopefully gain another 20,000 words. Also, it must be (ha!) good. Oh, and, it has to be compelling, and entertaining, and actually interesting to other people. Gulp.

Since I’ve last blogged, Ray Bradbury died. R is for Ray. When I was a kid, his stories made me feel less alone. The angst hidden in them mirrored my own.

I admit, though, I got a little upset when I read “R is for Rocket.” I wanted it to be a full novel and only realized it was a collection of stories at the end of what I thought was the first chapter. I think I’m still waiting to read the rest of that book, which doesn’t exist. I mean, some day, when I’m good enough, I could write it, but it won’t carry that weird ‘60’s modernist optimism about space travel (and, frankly, Mr. Bradbury’s lyricism).

But, speaking of ‘60’s modernist optimistic space travel, man, when I was a kid we were on our way to the moon. It seemed that after we got there, we’d visit Mars and Venus, maybe about a week later, and then on to the stars.

That didn’t happen.

On the other hand,

maybe Gil Scott-Heron had a point.

Oh. There’s one other thing I wanted to say about Ray Bradbury:

One night, some years ago, I found myself at the American Film Institute, and Ray was the guest speaker. He was amazing. He talked about following your heart and originality and how everything else would follow after that. He was so inspiring that my friends and I thought we could actually do anything that we believed in.

And we did.

***

I’m not usually a big fan of KPop, but, this is, well, the best video in the world, at least it was way back in the middle of July.